Chapter Sixteen: No Return.

  Jian Yue sighed, his face faltered into resignation as he answered it. “We… Reach back to world one…”

  When Jian Yue stopped speaking, the bonfire flared up, devouring the words between them.

  Mo Fei went silent; he spoke nothing he simply couldn't. His hands were resting on his knees, and began to tremble with a fine controllable shaking… Mo Fei held them back, thinking if they were the same hands that cut his throat, held the Glaive and stabbed his palm. Were they the same hand that showed his determination?

  Jian Yue watched silently, saying nothing further. He knew this; he had lived the same moment.

  With a low voice, Mo Fei finally spoke; his voice was raw and scraped clean of emotions. “So every time I thought I was getting closer, it was a lie… I was just… running in places.” With this, he looked at Jian Yue not with accusation but a hollow curiosity.

  “How many times? How many times have you been through this loop?” Mo Fei said and took a few seconds' break before speaking again. “How many times have you sat in a safe room and told someone like me that the door doesn't exist?”

  Jian Yue was silent; he knew this moment would come. He closed his eyes for one or two moments before meeting Mo Fei’s gaze. “Four times… I don't know when I will forget the counting and keep my track in this madness we are wretches.” He paused to answer the next question. “I've told this to nine people, and five have already died.” There was a regret in Jian Yue’s eyes, though he had known that survival wasn't inevitable.

  Mo Fei said he didn't accept it. “If I keep moving forward, if I learn more and don't fall back, maybe I can find a way out… Or maybe I die trying. But I refuse to live a life where I've to run and run like a coward to survive.”

  Elara and Han watched silently as they were born here. They knew about the existence of another world but they weren't ‘Ascenders’; this world was home for them.

  “Elara and Han, I owe you. If I find a way better for you somewhere safe and out of the reach of the Overseer, then I'll be free from the owed. That is not the same as going back home, but it's something more than what the world gives you.”

  When Mo Fei said this, Elara shook her head, and she said slowly. “No one ever promised this before… even if you failed, I'd still be thankful for even just a small try.”

  While Han put a heavy hand on Mo Fei’s shoulder, saying that it didn't matter, he had already done more than enough.

  “I spent my twenty years just being a slave with no dream of escaping. You're already ahead of me. Follow your hope, Mo Fei.” Han said in his presence of silent reassurance.

  Mo Fei looked at Lin and Jian Yue. He remembered something.

  “Jian Yue, Lin, do you think any ascenders could be living in World 0?” Lin’s face showed that she was clearly looking at him like, “Is he stupid?”

  “That's impossible. Why did you ask?” She answered anyway.

  “I know that no one had returned from ‘An Jie’, but because there was that shop which had that box. It couldn't be just a random item created out of myth.” This was an obvious and simple question, but it was valid. Some people had known about ‘An Jie’ in World 0, and the box was really weird, but well, those weird things could be sold at good prices so they didn't think of it too much.

  Jian Yue answered it. “We've wondered the same thing. Some thought it was related to ‘Sundering’. Some think it was sent back deliberately. A message, or a trap. No one knows. But yes, it's inevitable, no ‘Ascenders’ have ever returned to World 0, which you had most likely heard from the old man in the Qing street.”

  Mo Fei silently thought of it as the same old man and the same shop. Mo Fei’s thoughts got interrupted.

  Elara looked at Mo Fei and said.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  Mo Fei’s face held silent determination as he said.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “I'm not running toward world 11 anymore, it's pointless now, I'll find the current ‘Architect’ and look into his eyes and ask him: Why? And if I don't like the answer.” He clinched the Glaive lying near him. “He will have to answer again.”

  Lin sighed and said. “For a moment, let's say if you find ‘Him’, what makes you think he will answer? Bold of you to assume that.” This was the question that Mo Fei questioned himself too: was he even at a place where he could make him answer? Mo Fei remained silent, acknowledging the question.

  Lin's voice was sharp, she said. “The Architect isn't sitting in a throne room waiting for visitors. He's something we can't comprehend. You can't just 'ask' a god.”

  Mo Fei met her gaze. “There should be a right way to reach there?”

  “How? And why do you think this?”

  A pause. Longer than comfortable.

  “...I don't know yet.”

  Lin nodded, not mockingly. “Knowing what you don't know is sometimes the first step to actually learning.”

  Jian Yue’s face showed a slight relief that Mo Fei didn't lose hope, but he warned Mo Fei. “Good, but Mo Fei, remember this. You won't be the first one who tried to survive.”

  Lin stared at Mo Fei in scepticism, but there was a small respect that she didn't show. “Hmph, you are either the bravest idiot or the stupidest brave person I've ever met. Either way, I highly doubt your decision will stay longer than one or two months.” She paused before adding another line, a hint of curiosity.

  “Though I'll admit that I've never seen someone choosing Architect ‘Authority’. What do you actually see with those eyes?” She said it, which Mo Fei answered with.

  “Some threads that I don't know what they are, but I'll understand them soon.”

  Zhuo stayed silent; he had already been told everything, yet he felt oddly happier to have a new member of what he naively considered his family. His small hopeful smile curled at his lips, which he quickly hid.

  Zhuo quietly stepped in, offering them water as if a simple action to wash away the heaviness.

  “We can't stay serious all the time… Won't that exhaust you?” He softly said with a light grin tugging at his face, trying to lift the tension and the heaviness loosened slightly.

  Mo Fei took the glass, and the corner of his mouth twitched slightly despite himself. They were amused not because the tension had lifted, but because of how Zhuo always tried to lighten the mood but somehow ended up making it awkward instead. Elara stifled a chuckle in the background, but she stayed quiet.

  A week passed. On the third day of learning, Mo Fei tried to lift the glaive to use. His hand slipped, and it hit the floor with a clang that made Lin wince from disappointment.

  “Again,” she said without looking up from her herbs. She plucked off the leaves and put them in her bag.

  Mo Fei tried again; he gripped the haft. The weapon was lighter for it look. “The Architect's craft, well, Glaive is usually harder to master, stay in patience,” Lin explained, but Mo Fei's muscles only remembered textbooks and library stairs and the weight of a backpack; war was simply not in his muscle memories.

  Then

  SWING… CLANG.

  “...Again.”

  On the fourth day, Mo Fei tried to use his Eyes while holding the Glaive. He saw the threads even in the things that weren't alive; he was questioning what these eyes were in practicality. And then his eyes saw the thread connecting Lin to a faded scar on her wrist and threads covering her half-hand that were attached to her ribbon. It was an old wound. Or an old grief? He flinched, his eyes got blurry, and he quickly closed them. The Glaive clattered as it fell.

  Lin's face went white.

  "Don't," she said. "Don't look at us with those eyes. Not unless you're ready to carry what you see. If you don't know what they can do, that way. You're only inviting madness.” She warned him.

  By evening, his palms were blistered in the place of his old wound. By the fifth day, the blisters had healed faster than they should have.

  Mo Fei was washing his hands when he noticed it. The cuts on his forearm from practice were already sealing, edges knitting together overnight. Lin, beside him, washing herbs, said.

  The ‘Authority’ is changing your physical capacity but it won't increase much for the lower ‘Ordinal’.

  Mo Fei looked at his hands. They were still his hands. But they healed as they belonged to someone else. It was a good thing, but at the same time, there were doubts in Mo Fei’s mind.

  “... Why do the ‘Ascenders’ get this?” But he had no answer… But he knew he had to pursue and struggle for answers.

  Once again, they found themselves sitting together for their next plan. It was finally the moment when they had to move forward.

  They began to create a strategy. Lin had notes on World 5, pieced together from fragments left by the previous ascenders. It was called “The Longing Heaven,” a place where desire manifested, then was harvested. A realm of addictive beauty and soul-crushing consumption.

  Jian Yue’s voice cut through the silence.

  “We can slip through that and gather information, then find the exit.”

  Lin gave another reason to prevent any reckless act. “Stealth doesn't matter if we don't know what we're looking for there. The Longing Heaven can easily suppress our ‘Authority’ once we get there. If we go in wanting just to escape, it will certainly eat us alive.

  Mo Fei Suggested. “What if we don't resist desire? Can't we use it against it?”

  Jian Yue heard Lin’s logical reasoning as he looked at Mo Fei and spoke. “No, she is right, that can weaken our ‘Authority’. We have to gather the information we need for the next city.”

  Mo Fei was confused as to why they were taking the risk if they didn't know why they were going there, and he questioned it.

  “Then why are we going there?”

  “To collect the pages of the ‘Severed Record’ book,” Lin answered and then Jian Yue continued.

  “It's a book that contains rituals to advance the next ‘Elevation’. As you know, we are not much higher ‘Elevation’ and to hold our ground, we have to perform our specific rituals.”

  Lin revealed. “And what Jian Yue told me is that Xue Lan was one ‘Elevation’ above us. That means indubitably he possesses one of his own ‘Authority’ pages.”

  Before they could talk further.

  Zhou, who was on watch at the door, suddenly saw something, and Zhuo's cup slipped from his fingers. The cup fell, cracking from the handle, and water spilled across the floor, darkening the dust. He stared at the door, at the flickering sigils, and for the first time, Mo Fei saw how young he really was. Fifteen, maybe. A child wearing a warrior's belt before he heard his quiet words called out.

  “Jian Yue!”

  Everyone fell silent. Jian Yue, not wasting a second, was at the door in an instant. He placed his hand on the door. The sigils shimmered, showing the outside world: the moonlit, wind-scoured passed.

  It was empty with hail falling.

  “Zhuo… What did you see?” Jian Yue whispered.

  “A… a shadow. It wasn't an animal. It moved against the wind. Then it was gone.”

  Elara moved closer to Han and Mo Fei, not touching, but near. The garden girl and the stonemason. Two people who'd never held a weapon, now standing between Mo Fei and a door that might open to anything and a fear of the unknown lingering outside… Or perhaps inside?

  The hail struck harder against the walls.

  And this time, none of them believed it was just the weather. The sigils started to flicker, as if whatever stood outside had noticed them. The sigil’s blue glow turned faint grey.

  “It's not trying to break in,” Jian Yue whispered. “It's asking the door to open.” Then, from outside, a voice. Not a snarl. Not a howl. A single word, spoken in perfect, patient Mandarin:

  “Please...”

  Jian Yue turned to them. His hand was not moving from the gate, and he warned.

  “It's too late to run.”